By Rick Radin
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 09/24/2009 09:34:37 PM PDT
Updated: 09/25/2009 07:11:31 AM PDT
Roadblocks and delays have forced Contra Costa County's grand jury to shelve its plan to examine the county's foster care program.
The jury successfully sued the county in January for access to case files of foster children, winning the right to review files with the names of children and other people and the children's medical records blacked out to comply with state confidentiality laws.
The nine redacted cases the jury received from the county were edited so extensively and delivered so slowly that the jury was unable to begin a meaningful investigation before its term expired June 30, jury foreman Ron Tervelt said.
"We weren't trying to look into specific cases of children, but at the process of how children are processed in the foster care system," Tervelt said. "We were trying to find out if kids were falling through the cracks because of problems (with the system)."
Valerie Earley, director of Contra Costa's children and family services, said the file deliveries began in March and were delayed because of the time it took to copy and redact 52 volumes of files about nine children.
The jury began the probe in part because of Times stories about children being abused and neglected in foster care, including the 2006 case in which a child in Antioch died from ingesting baking soda in her foster home. The county's Employment and Human Services Department found that a county clinic doctor did not report that the 2-year-old he saw two weeks before her death weighed only 19 pounds. The child's biological parents later sued the county for $20 million.
"When you hear the word 'death,' everyone sits up in their chair," Tervelt said. "When there's death, something clearly must have gone wrong."
In another 2006 case, an 8-year-old Richmond boy — who had been left in the care of his mother after a child-abuse investigation by county social workers — died of what investigators suspected was starvation. His body was covered with burn marks, scars, swelling and purple bruises. The department had received six child abuse referrals on the child.
The Human Services department instigated some reforms because of the shortcomings revealed in the Times stories, said its top manager. For example, county physicians now are reminded repeatedly that they must report any signs of malnutrition, injuries or other signs of abuse in the foster children they see, regardless of whether the child's overall health appears normal, said Joe Valentine, director of employment and human services.
The health department also established special hours for foster children at one of its clinics and linked health department files with foster care records to assure that doctors and nurses know when they're treating a foster child.
The grand jury's frustration comes amid fresh challenges for the foster care system over the past year.
Fewer resources
The county has laid off 74 of the 175 social workers it had a year ago because of budget cuts, although it still fields 7,000 reports of child abuse annually and must still track 1,600 children in the foster care program, Valentine said.
"This year our resources just plummeted overnight," Valentine said. "We've reassigned kids to the workers that are left and everybody has more cases."
The department is focused on maintaining the basic safety of foster children in the program and no longer follows up on children who have been returned to their parents, placed with relatives or adopted by their foster parents.
Also eliminated: post-foster care counseling for parents, mental health counseling for parents and children, tutoring services for foster kids and transportation to therapy or medical appointments.
"For incoming cases, recommended standards are about 10 cases a month per social worker. Now we are at 13," Valentine said. "We are channeling all our efforts into making sure that number doesn't go higher."
Valentine said the program is under the overall supervision of the state Department of Social Services, which has electronic access to case files, and periodically audits case files and interviews case workers.
The state does the electronic and on-site audits to make sure counties are following federal and state standards for foster care and investigating child abuse referrals properly, said Kevin Gaines, an assistant deputy director in the social services department.
Families in distress
Stress on foster care locally is mirrored statewide and nationwide where foster care programs are in trouble because of budget cuts and the economy, said Jill Duerr Berrick, an authority on foster care at UC Berkeley's School of Social Welfare.
"Counties are having to be more parsimonious in things like (post-foster care) services at the same time many states are reporting a very rapid increase in the numbers of child-abuse reports, which may be due to the economic distress that families are under," Berrick said.
The next step for the grand jury is unclear. Tervelt said that proceeding with its probe will be difficult unless it returns to court to get more information from the files. Grand jury rules aimed at protecting the identities of witnesses prohibit the jury from revealing its plans and findings except through the release of periodic reports, and no new reports are planned until next year, he said.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_13413263?nclick_check=1
No comments:
Post a Comment